Review: HBO's 'In Treatment' painfully boring

Published 4:00 am, Monday, January 28, 2008

In this photo released by HBO shows Gabriel Byrne,left, and Melissa George in a scene from the new drama "In Treatment" starring Byrne as a psychotherapist.(AP Photo/Claudette Barius,HBO)

In this photo released by HBO shows Gabriel Byrne,left, and Melissa George in a scene from the new drama "In Treatment" starring Byrne as a psychotherapist.(AP Photo/Claudette Barius,HBO)

Photo: CLAUDETTE BARIUS

Review: HBO's 'In Treatment' painfully boring

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In Treatment: Drama. 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday on HBO.

It's time for an intervention at HBO.

The pay-cable channel, once seemingly infallible as it programmed its way to greatness, now has an alarming string of missteps on its hands. It could just be the television gods taking back what they had given HBO during its long run of original programming successes, but it probably has a lot more to do with the lack of a coherent vision.

Tonight, HBO unveils its latest series, "In Treatment," which airs in half hour episodes five nights a week and follows the emotional travails of four people in psychotherapy and what appears to be the professional and personal midlife crises of the therapist at the center of it all: Paul (Gabriel Byrne).

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The series aims for a rawness that depicts the troubled aspects of people in crisis written with intelligence and deft emotional shading. Where "In Treatment" actually ends up, however, is quite different. The writing is forced and thin, some of the acting stagey, most of the characters unlikable and - the show-killer quality that HBO execs apparently failed to see - profoundly boring.

"In Treatment" makes HBO's last series on therapy, "Tell Me You Love Me," seem like "30 Rock." What in the world is going on at HBO? How many executives are in therapy, and thus, blind to the fact that most shows about therapy are deadly dull precisely because therapy itself is not fun (at least it's not supposed to be - maybe some HBO execs have discovered a new kind of feel-good Hollywood therapy that turns 50 minutes into a psychoanalytical hootenanny).

"In Treatment" has almost no trouble making 30 minutes feel like 50. No protestations that this is art or that it's important or that there's real dramatic gold to be mined from navel-gazing introspection can change that fact.

Exactly what went into the thought process at HBO to program two therapy series one right after the other? The only benefit of having seen "In Treatment" is that a whole lot more slack can now be cut for "Tell Me You Love Me." The great failure of that series is that no matter how well it was written or how wonderful the acting was (or even how shocking the sex was), it couldn't get past the fact it was a downer to watch. Plenty of HBO series have proven that attempting high art need not delete the necessity to entertain. "Tell Me You Love Me" never passed the "Do people really want to watch this?" test. That first season was almost too good - a documentary of sorts on how three or more relationships can come unhinged and how much hurt is involved in that process. Yes, it was a long way from the glib lightness of "Entourage" but so, too, did it fail to go beyond the mere presentation of emotional implosions and offer viewers a reason to keep watching. Television shouldn't be torturous. An ambitious miss, perhaps?

Yet, even if you play the pay-cable card - that HBO and Showtime create uncompromising television series for intelligent grown-ups who don't need to be spoon-fed the kind of simplistic, instant-gratification drama sold by network television - there's still no defending "In Treatment."

It's boring. It's fraudulent rather than Freudian. At least the pain in "Tell Me You Love Me" seemed honest. "In Treatment" takes the gravitas out of actors being emotionally naked and replaces it with the empty sheen of actors trying desperately to will drama from artificial angst. At its worst, "In Treatment" feels like an "Oprah" show without the commercials.

Does HBO really believe people will make "In Treatment" appointment television? Five nights a week is an awfully big commitment. It will probably only take one episode for viewers to think "What's to like here?" By three episodes, it should be apparent to even the most open-minded. For what it's worth, Byrne is likable. He's the emotional anchor on the series, but by the time we see him coming a bit unraveled in Thursday's and Friday's episodes, his issues begin to feel like more of the same, precisely when viewers won't be able to tolerate more of the same.

Getting through the second week of shows was grueling. Having endured the first week and each patient setup, the second five should have been more compelling and less boring if, for nothing else, the viewer had gotten to know each character better and was thus rewarded with illuminating storytelling and more interesting angles.

It didn't. It revealed each "patient" to be as deeply annoying as originally thought. No wonder Byrne says he's "losing patience with my patients." That's a pain we all feel.

In tonight's premiere episode, the camera opens on Laura, the first patient. She's crying. But it doesn't seem believable, a problem that continues with other patients. Laura (Melissa George) has a thing for Paul (Byrne), but in the necessary give-and-take depiction of people in therapy, she can't quite get to the point of just saying it. "In Treatment" is littered with examples of this kind of verbal constipation. The inability to say what they are really feeling is supposed to exemplify how much pain each patient is in, or how deep in denial they are about their problems. How that translates to the home viewer is much simpler: It's a laborious exercise in drama that leads almost instantly to boredom.

Alex (Blair Underwood) is Paul's Tuesday patient. He's an egocentric Navy fighter pilot with a wealth of issues that will probably surface in a few weeks, but his arrogance and the meandering writing that illustrates it makes this story line particularly aggravating to watch.

Sophie (Mia Wasikowska), is Paul's Wednesday patient and she doesn't make the viewing process much easier. Sophie's a petulant teenage gymnast who might have suicidal tendencies and some misplaced affection for her coach - issues so obvious that you can only hope they are red herrings. At one point, Sophie says, snappishly, "Is this how it's going to be for three appointments?" Unfortunately, yes.

Apparently, Paul also does couple's counseling, because Jake (Josh Charles) and Amy (Embeth Davidtz) are Paul's Thursday patients. Despite the fact that they both display immediate abhorrent behavior, at least Jake's anger and aggression add a little momentum to the otherwise static drama. It's nice to see Charles ("Sports Night") again, even if he plays a jerk.

Now, as good as Byrne is with asking questions and absorbing the blowback from his patients (he's got the facial tics down flat), the central character can't just sit there. So, the writers have given him some marriage trouble with his wife, Kate (Michelle Forbes), and a need to heal himself through visits to his own therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest), whom he sees on Fridays. The backstory with Gina and Paul is long and complicated, and it appears that "In Treatment" will reveal that only through the slow, cloaked intentions and feints and jabs of two therapists hiding some truth.

The problem is, "In Treatment" is a series without much of a point. Drama needs conflict, but talking about conflict instead of illustrating it is just so much psychobabble. Much of "In Treatment," with its minimalist setting, near entire lack of music and two-shot monotony, begins to feel staged, as if the actors are performing "Love Letters" - except it's not a paean to the heart but the id, ego and superego.

"In Treatment" was imported from Israel, where it became a kind of national phenomenon. (Reportedly, the DVDs of the series are sold both as a set and individually, so you can follow only Alex's story, if you so desire. And Godspeed with that.) But this isn't Israel. American television sets the worldwide standard for diverse offerings. "In Treatment" might be the Israeli version of a telenovela (like "Betty La Fea" in Latin America), but we already have soap operas here. And "Six Feet Under." And, well, "Tell Me You Love Me." Americans are probably going to need a little something else than unrewarding therapy sessions five nights a week before they buy the boxed set.

As for watching it, HBO will have all five of the week's episodes available On Demand every Monday and, starting next week, will air the first "Laura" episode before the second and so on with each character on each day of the week. Then, each week's five episodes will be shown back-to-back on Sundays.

It's a nifty strategy. Too bad HBO didn't make a series worthy of all the options.

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